"The Ticket": For something like the last 15 years I've wanted to start a Usical Group (note that I DON'T USE THE WORD 'band') called "The Ticket That Exploded".  When I was 15 years old, 51 years ago in 1968 or thereabouts, I 1st heard the music of a band called "The Soft Machine", whose song "Hope for Happiness" played on a rock radio station in Baltimore, where I grew up.  I loved it.  I still love & listen to their earlier music to this day.  It wasn't until 5 or more years later that I saw the book entitled "The Soft Machine" in a suburban bookstore chain.  It was then that I realized that the band had taken their name from the novel by William S. Burroughs.  I read the novel & found it shocking & astonishing & very inspired.  I loved it.  I haven't reread it since then but I suspect that it will always rate as one of the most important books in my life.  "The Ticket that Exploded" is the name of the novel that followed "The Soft Machine".  Because of my enthusiasm for both the band & the novel, I wanted to tip my imaginary hat to both.  Hence this project.  One of my (d) compositions, "The Birds of Villa Villa Lobos (after Michael Pestel)" even has some similiarity to a "Soft Machine 3" era piece.  HOWEVER, the incarnation of "The Ticket that Exploded" that's currently taking place has little to do with either the originally inspiring band or writer.  This movie, whose sound can be used seperately, is the 'theme song' for the Usical Group.  The 1st minute, which consists of this sentence: "The Ticket is what ham radio operators call the license they get from the FCC after they prove their competence at keying Morse Code.", is meant to be presented with only me playing simultaneously.  The remianing 9 minutes are meant to be played along with by the remaining members of the group: Ben Opie: reeds, electronics; Roger Dannenberg: brass, laptop; Coal Hornet: reeds, strings; Jeff Weston: contrabass.  I play: samples, percussion, music boxes, tuning forks, etc..  I hope that this particular configuration of players will be able to continue to play together but given how busy most of them are I have my doubts.  As of December, 2019, we have 3 extraordinary possible gigs lined up for the next half a year.  I've already made 2 other relevant movies that interested people might want to check out: "Morse Code" - 41:35 - 2316 X 1988 / 60 fps - edit finished December 3, 2019 - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/MX7BVbVvQg8 - on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/morsecode_201912 ;  "Coal & tENT: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & Coal Hornet discuss IMPROVisation: 2019.11.24" - 1:06:31 - 1080p - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/KX4QDzHpyJo - on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/coaltent . - December 10, 2019 notes from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE  

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